


blowin' in the wind

by kingsoftheimpossible



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Relationships and Time and Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 09:41:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20423855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingsoftheimpossible/pseuds/kingsoftheimpossible
Summary: Sasha brings Sanya the Cup.(takes place at the Russian cup party after the Caps won the damn thing, etc.)





	blowin' in the wind

**Author's Note:**

> i think this mostly came out as a meditation on aging and alexander semin. i wrote it in about two hours after recording a frantic voice note during my drive to class today.
> 
> warnings: technically if you squint i guess it could be infidelity since they're both married? it doesn't come up.  
also because of the incredibly quick turnaround, the only beta-reading was me reading it over about forty times as i wrote it, so feel free to point out any nonsense. i'm also not sure if any of the meaning behind their "conversation" is understandable lol.
> 
> title from the bob dylan song bc it's one of those weeks

Certain things exist outside of time. Pain, which lasts as long as it lasts and no time at all. Salt. Victory. Winter. Diamonds, formed under specific external pressures. Love of certain types, formed the same way. 

Sanya’s had less time to brood over the past few years than anyone might imagine: shaping a life after and outside of expectations is a labor-intensive process. The past has called him less than even he’d predicted. 

Still, standing a stone’s throw from that marvelous, monstrous cup, the air thick with booze and flowers, laughter, music- it sweeps him up for a moment, pulls him back until he’s on that small North American ice, hardheaded and homesick. And in the midst of it all, here and there, then and now, Sasha, as always. An anachronism of sheer presence. He’s familiar the way a dream of childhood is familiar. Impossible and misremembered, but Sanya wants to hold onto him just a bit longer anyway, look at him just a moment more in spite of how uncomfortable it is to be misplaced in time.

It’s a strange feeling, even in a life made up of a over a decade of near-constant strange feelings.

* * *

Sanya’s not avoiding anyone. He’s crafted an off-ice reputation for avoidance, so he’d like to think he’d be better at it if he were trying. He certainly wouldn’t be caught near a fire exit behind the rented-out bar, smoking a cigarette he keeps tucked away in his pocket for emergencies. 

It’s too predictable a scene, anyway. They might as well be under-20’s again, Sanya skirting rules and Sasha following out of whatever loyalty builds up from forming a two-person shelter against the unknown. Sasha would follow him anywhere, almost, to a point. The rest is nobody’s fault.

It’s awkward when Sasha says nothing, just stands quite close with his hands in the pockets of his very expensive suit pants. Tailored, even. Wonders never cease.

“Well,” Sanya says finally, watching the smoke-snake of his own breath with an odd, detached sort of interest, “well done.” It comes out shorter than he intends, but he doesn’t expect Sasha to hold it against him.

He isn’t sure what he expects, but the frenetic, charged silence that greets him certainly isn’t it. He glances to the side without moving his head, taking stock of Sasha’s big frame and the shock of gray in his hair. His nose looks less crooked, or more. It’s hard to tell in the flickering yellow light of the alley. Hard to tell without facing him head-on. 

When Sasha turns to him fully, finally, all soft-curved shoulders and intent gaze, Sanya realizes the bomb he intends to drop the moment before Sasha hammers out the launch code. 

It’s a race, but Sanya wins, as always, hissing out, “Do  _ not _ ,” just as Sasha opens his mouth.

The standoff that follows is almost incongruously mellow. They haven’t done this in what feels like a century, certainly not since they were all hormones and head injuries and just as liable to take a swing as they were to talk anything out. 

They’re older, now. It’s such a strange, centerless feeling. Somewhere deep in his chest, Sanya is still 23 years old and ready to do just about anything. Hard to balance that with how calm he feels on the surface now, even at his most desperate. 

Sanya wishes he’d brought another cigarette, wishes he hadn’t quit smoking, is glad he did. “I congratulated you,” he points out. “You could at least say thank you.”

And Sasha, who loses his words in big moments, who leads through action, who is still like a brother, in the way you could go without seeing a brother for half your natural life and your blood would still sing upon reunion, grins at him. That gap in his teeth like a skipped heartbeat, something always half-tame to him that set Sanya at ease when everything else was too fucking put together. 

* * *

Sasha had been abominably young when they’d met. Still is, in that way wealth and circumstance allow certain people. He’d pissed Sanya off with his big, open heart. He’d done a lot more than that. Fought, fucked, failed- they’d gotten the big things out of the way early. Sometimes, when he thinks of him at all, Sanya feels like he could count the things he hasn’t done with Sasha on one hand.

The skin of Sasha's face is rougher than expected when he shoves himself into Sanya’s space, backs him up against the exposed brick between the door and the big industrial dumpster and buries himself against Sanya’s neck. His beard, Sanya realizes a beat too late. The remnants of that goddamn grandfather of a playoff beard. 

It feels, dizzyingly, as if he’s never stopped holding up Sasha’s weight. 

They know each other too well, and so he knows what Sasha is doing.  _ Like this _ , he’s trying to say, pressing Sanya harder back into the wall, smiling huge and hot and raising goosebumps across Sanya’s skin with his heavy breaths.  _ It would’ve felt like this.  _ Sanya’s emotional support cigarette is somewhere on the disgusting, damp pavement at their feet. 

It’s muscle memory, the way Sanya gets a hand on Sasha’s jaw and pulls him up to look him steadily in the eye. He traces a thumb over the delicate skin beneath Sasha’s eyebrow, smooths the small hairs where they’ve been disarranged by drinking and doing. 

Sasha doesn’t look young. He looks good. He feels heavy and solid where he’s still letting Sanya bear him up. None of this is a revelation. 

“Thank you for coming,” Sasha parrots, all practiced politeness, the same intonation he’d use with any of their herd of shared acquaintances still debauching the bar. 

Sanya snorts. “Asshole.”

“I’d kiss you, you know, one last time, end of an era,” Sasha laments, ”if you wouldn’t taste like an ashtray.”

He’s insufferable. “You’ve been in America too long.” Sanya steels his grip on Sasha’s jaw and kisses him anyway, shoving his tongue into Sasha’s mouth for good measure. Maybe someday they’ll be old enough to do this in a way that isn’t half-play. 

_ Don’t let the day come, _ Sanya sends up a little prayer between himself and the noisy traffic and buzzing electricity of the streetlights out on the main road.

It doesn’t last long. They’re in an alley, separated from a horde of interested parties by nothing but a damp brick wall and a propped door. They’re too fucking old to fuck in alleys, Sanya thinks with a huffed laugh, and Sasha pulls away to wrinkle his nose.

“Ashtray,” he repeats, eyes crinkled with unbearable fondness. 

Parting is easy; it’s always easier to say goodbye to someone you know you’ll see again. Sasha straightens his collar for him, even remains still long enough to allow Sanya to tidy the wildest bits of his hair where the silver has swept back from his brow as if he’d braved a windstorm. 

“I just came to tell you Kuzma was looking for you,” Sasha explains, able to speak more than fine now that the critical moment has passed. “Didn’t think you would be so full of feelings, old man.”

Oh, Christ. Sanya’s bones turn to dust and his blood dries to powder at the thought of facing Evgeny. Sasha, timeless by virtue of time spent, is one thing. Having any conversation with Evgeny in Sanya’s current state might just kill him. Old man, indeed. 

Sasha fucks up his own tie under the guise of fixing it and turns to go back inside, and it’s only once he’s gone and Sanya has a chance to breathe again that he realizes Sasha’s slipped something into his hand. 

He opens his palm, filled with equal parts trepidation and curiosity, and laughs when he finds a slightly crushed but new cigarette. Sasha’s always been, among many things, a fucking liar, and Sanya’s always loved that about him. 


End file.
